Disciple of the Wind

by Steve Bein

  “We’re king-makers. Street-level criminality is not our milieu.”

  “So much for ‘no place you cannot reach.’”

  “On the contrary. We have you.”

  She heard crystal clink against crystal—a decanter gently bumping a whisky tumbler, if she had to guess. “This crisis will not be resolved in the halls of power,” he said. “It will be resolved when someone sees a panic-stricken child waving frantically from a window. Your people make their living by knowing what happens on the streets. Talk to them. Find out what they’ve heard, what they’ve seen.”

  Mariko didn’t need to think about that for long. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t have disgraced me with my department, huh? A lot of cops won’t want to take my calls right now. I can talk to my CIs, but I have to tell you, my guys know dope, not kooky cults.”

  “This kidnapping was a massive effort. Koji-san must have employed hundreds of people to carry it out—”

  “And you’re hoping for a blabbermouth in the group. Keep hoping. These are cultists. Fanatically loyal. Some are willing to blow themselves up.”

  “Detective Oshiro, you have a pernicious habit of interrupting people. I must say I don’t care for it.”

  “Gee, sorry.”

  He took a sip of whatever he was drinking. “As I was saying, Detective, he must have deployed many hundreds. Our intelligence indicates his entire cult is fewer than a thousand strong. Not all of them can be in his inner circle. One of them will talk.”

  “We can hope. But I don’t like our chances. Start looking at traffic camera footage. Maybe we can spot … no, you’ve tried that already, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. The entire system underwent a ‘routine software upgrade’ at a quarter of eight this morning—seven hours after it was scheduled to happen, and about ten minutes before the first report of an abduction. We trained Koji-san too well.”

  “You think?”

  Mariko threaded her arms awkwardly into yesterday’s blouse, shifting the phone from one ear to the other and back, then pinching it between her ear and shoulder as she buttoned up. “Okay, but he took them by car, neh? Like, a lot of cars. It’s the only way to move that many kids. So what if—?”

  “Let me stop you there. The answer you’re fumbling for is traffic helicopter footage. We’ve already captured it and we’re analyzing it now. He was very careful; thus far we have detected no anomalies.”

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “So you’ve thought of everything. I’ll talk to my people, for all the good it will do. But word gets around about cops, so some of my CIs will know I’ve been suspended. They may not be willing to talk.”

  “You can tell them you’ve been reinstated. You’ll find a badge and identification waiting for you in a box on the porch. A pistol and holster too; you prefer a SIG-Sauer P230, as I recall.”

  “How did you—?”

  “There is no place the Wind cannot reach.”

  Mariko groaned. “What if I hadn’t called this morning? You were just going to leave it sitting there?”

  “Oh, but you did call.”

  “Whatever. I’m not taking the pistol.”

  “It’s not illegal. I took the liberty of creating a permit for you.”

  “I said I’m not taking it.”

  “Joko Daishi is dangerous. You should know when it comes time to face him: he is extraordinarily difficult to kill.”

  Face him? Mariko had no intention of doing that. She’d find him, keep eyes on him, and call the cops. Regardless of whether Furukawa was right about all the fate stuff, it was clear that Mariko and Joko Daishi were on a collision course. She couldn’t be tempted to pull a gun on him if she didn’t carry one in the first place, and then she couldn’t accidentally fulfill the destiny the Wind had planned for her.

  Even so, something Furukawa had said made her curious. “You told me something like that before. You said he’s almost bulletproof. Why?”

  “There was an ancient weapon. Streaming Dawn, it was called. It had … oh, shall we say, unusual properties.”

  “I know. Yamada-sensei wrote about it in his notes.”

  “Well, now! You’ve been quite the diligent student, haven’t you?”

  Mariko let out an exasperated grunt. “You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

  “Oh, pleasantly so. A historian’s scribblings hardly make for exciting reading material. If you’ll pardon my saying so, I didn’t know you had the patience.”

  “Thanks. That makes me feel so much better. What’s the deal with Streaming Dawn?”

  “Ah, yes. The blade that heals. Well, after a fashion. The Wind unlocked its secrets some years ago. Do you know what we found? The blade needn’t be whole to exercise its remarkable power.”

  “And?”

  “It was broken. Four shards, none of them as potent as the original, yet each one has the power to stave off death. The shonin bestow them upon an operative when they deem he is too important to lose.”

  Mariko nodded. “And they gave one to Joko Daishi. Got it. I’ll toss it in an evidence bag when I arrest him.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple.” Furukawa breathed heavily into the phone; Mariko couldn’t read the emotion there. “Streaming Dawn had to be embedded in the subject’s body to be effective. That was the curse entwined with its blessing. The fragments are no different, but the shonin found an alternative to stabbing oneself. Their solution was … well, more permanent, shall we say.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The shards are surgically implanted.”

  Mariko squirmed. The thought of having a shattered knife stuck in her body made her shudder. “Eww.”

  “Yes. It’s quite painful. Nevertheless, I must urge you to carry that pistol, Detective. You needn’t fear killing him with it; your bullets are only likely to slow him a little. But slowing him might make the difference between your survival and an excruciating death.”

  “Right,” Mariko said. It was exactly what he’d like her to believe if he wanted her to kill Joko Daishi.

  “I warn you, Detective Oshiro, his martial training is considerable. You must not face him unarmed.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Good-bye, Furukawa-san.”

  She finished getting dressed and headed downstairs, where she found Shoji-san in the kitchen over a little pot of rice. “Some breakfast before you go, dear.”

  “I can’t,” Mariko said. “I’ve really got to run. Um … listen, I’ve got to ask. Do you know where I can find your son?”

  Shoji deflated a little. “No.”

  “I promise I won’t hurt him. Furukawa wants me to. He says I’m supposed to kill him. With Yamada-sensei’s sword, no less. So here’s the deal: I’m not going back to my apartment. I won’t even set foot in the same room as the sword. And I’m going to give you the gun that Furukawa left for me on your porch. I swear to you, Shoji-san, I’m not going to do their dirty work for them. I’m not going to hurt your son.”

  Shoji’s unseeing eyes gazed blankly at the steam rising off the rice. “I know.”

  “I can’t say they won’t. But I promise you this: I will do my best to see your son brought to justice. He’s going to have a judge, a jury, and a defense attorney. From there, I have to tell you I hope he spends the rest of his life in prison. But he’s not going to be executed by some assassin. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  “I know, Mariko-san. I don’t want to tell you… .” Shoji cleared her throat and blinked back tears. The way her eye scars bent at the corners made her seem sadder. “My child or all the others. For my whole life I’ve chosen mine. Today … Mariko, don’t go after him. I see him wearing the mask. You have the sword in hand. He can see it coming. Do you understand, Mariko? He has seen his death coming. He sees it as a bright light, as bright as the sun. You’ll try to ambush him. You’ll fail.”

  “Am I going to … ?”

  Mariko couldn’t bring herself to finish the question. It was better not to know. If she got the wr
ong answer, she might have trouble seeing this through.

  “I’ve got to go, Shoji-san.” Mariko hurried for the door.

  41

  By ten o’clock the numbers were in. 1,304 public elementary schools in the Tokyo school system; 1,290 kids taken; thirteen botched attempts; two fatalities after one of the kidnappers got himself killed along with his abductee in a stupid, preventable car crash; zero sightings of Joko Daishi, the Divine Wind, or the kidnapped children; nineteen attempts on Mariko’s part to get something useful out of a contact or confidential informant, with zero results to show for it.

  Every school was locked down, not just in Tokyo but Chiba, Yokohama, Saitama—every major city in the region. Not just the grade schools, either; all of them, public and private, from kindergarten through twelfth grade. There weren’t enough police to cordon every school—not even close—so principals and teachers were left to fend for themselves. The advice they were getting from the National Police Agency was to lock down the campus completely. The NPA needed head counts from every classroom, and the counts had to be pristine. Well-meaning parents were being arrested for trying to take their kids home. The arresting officers had no choice; there was no way to tell between an earnest mother and a cultist of the Divine Wind.

  Tokyo was crippled. Its hospitals were plague zones, its roadways were death traps, its airports and train stations were targets. If there was a positive side for Mariko, it was that getting around town had never been easier. Traffic was light, and though the sky was swarming with police choppers, they were hunting for kids, not speeding drivers. Mariko didn’t own a car, but Furukawa had left the white BMW parked outside Shoji’s house, with the keys in the same box as the pistol, badge, and ID. As promised, Mariko left the gun in Shoji’s foyer, unloaded and safetied. She kept the false badge, knowing it could get her in trouble but predicting greater trouble if she went without it. It hadn’t done her much good thus far; none of her contacts had asked to see it, and even if they had, none of them knew anything.

  Most of the kids hadn’t been yanked screaming off the streets. That much was clear. There were trusted adults involved here, coconspirators, but Mariko couldn’t let her thoughts wander that way. That was police thinking. There would already be over a hundred detectives tasked with identifying the kidnappers and figuring out how they were connected. It would take weeks to reach the conclusion Mariko already had in hand: they were all members of the Divine Wind. What she needed to know was where the hell they went, and that was where she was drawing a blank.

  Furukawa was right: Mariko was in a position unlike any of his other operatives. Very few people could move as fluidly between the police and the criminal element. Any cop who knew of Mariko’s suspension also knew it was a major indiscretion to keep her up to date on the details of the kidnapping investigations, but Han didn’t care about rules like that. She had connections he didn’t, so for him it was a simple quid pro quo. At the same time, she wasn’t handcuffed by everything that usually limited a detective on duty. She could harass CIs with open-ended questions that had nothing to do with a real live case. She could even coerce them if she felt like it, and most importantly, if she broke any laws she could only be charged as a civilian. It was impossible to charge her with official misconduct, the felony that would end her career.

  She pulled the Beemer into the parking garage of a posh Ebisu high-rise and slid it on squealing tires next to a giant red Land Rover. A hulking, sour-faced man was waiting for her. His arms were big enough to test the tensile strength of his ill-fitting suit jacket, and his chest was even bulkier. Mariko saw not just muscles there but also the outlines of an armored vest under his shirt. She got out of the car and said, “Hi, Bullet. Where’s your boss?”

  A darkly tinted window rolled down in the backseat of the Land Rover, revealing the broad, square-jawed face of Kamaguchi Hanzo. It was his ruthless tenacity, not just his sharp teeth and pronounced underbite, that had earned him the nickname the Bulldog. He maintained that reputation by never backing down from a fight, and by ripping people’s throats out when they crossed him. Even by yakuza standards he was a bloodthirsty brute.

  “Well, look at you,” he said. “My little gokudo cop. Someone kick your ass, honey? You look beat to hell.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Come around this way. Let me see if you been keeping that tight little ass in shape.”

  There was a reason Mariko kept her car between herself and the man she’d come to see. The Bulldog was unpredictable, prone to fits of anger. She wouldn’t get within arm’s reach if she didn’t have to. The fact that he couldn’t ogle her as easily was just an unexpected perk.

  “You know why I’m here,” she said. “Kidnapped children. I want to know where they went.”

  “Depends. What are they worth?”

  “What?”

  “Can I buy them? Can I sell them? No. So I don’t give a shit where they are.”

  Lovely. He was every bit as charming as she remembered. “Don’t be naive,” she said. “Thirteen hundred kids is a hell of a lot. You want to tell me not one yakuza’s kid is in there? I thought you people took care of your own.”

  “Not my kid, not my problem. Plus, your friend did his homework. He didn’t touch anyone who shouldn’t be touched.”

  Go figure, Mariko thought. Joko Daishi had planned for everything. And he probably used the Wind’s resources to do it. She still couldn’t believe she’d gotten into bed with Furukawa.

  “Look,” she said, “you have a lot of people in this town. Someone has to have seen something. Help me this one time.” Hating herself for saying it, she added, “I’ll owe you one.”

  “Owe me one? What do you think you got? I hear you’re on the outs with the cops.”

  Mariko flashed her badge. “I’m back in. Why else would I be investigating the kids?”

  “Beats me. Maybe it’s got something to do with those sweet wheels.” His mouth widened into a smile, a hideous expression on such a cruel face. “Is that a real badge? Get over here and give me a closer look.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Bulldog.”

  “Heh. Still think you’re pretty gokudo, huh?”

  Not today, Mariko thought. She could use a little badass mojo. But when dealing with a bulldog, if you didn’t have it, you had to fake it. “You know what I think? I think you’re not holding out on me at all. I think you don’t know shit. All those cons you’re running, all those front companies, all the sharks you’ve got collecting protection money, and what are they good for? Not one of them has seen a damn thing.”

  The Bulldog snarled. “Honey, this is a dangerous game you’re playing.”

  “Is it? Prove me wrong. Show me the Kamaguchi-gumi can still get it up.”

  Even Bullet bristled at that, and usually he was about as expressive as a meat cleaver. Kamaguchi flung his door open and stepped out of the Land Rover. By the sound of it, his door left a pretty good dent in the side of Mariko’s BMW. He wore a silver-gray suit, and brushing his jacket aside, he jerked a stubby stainless steel revolver out of a hip holster. “You’re an annoying little cunt, you know that? I ought to blow your fucking brains out.”

  That was when Mariko knew she was safe. The Bulldog wasn’t long on self-control. If he was going to fly into a rampage, he would have pulled the trigger already. The fact that he was talking, not shooting, meant this was pure theater. So Mariko played her role too. “Come on. Shooting a cop in your own parking garage? You’re smarter than that.”

  It was the exit he needed to back down and still save face in front of his bodyguard. “Smarter? Yeah, this time. Next time you come around here, don’t press your luck.”

  “Have a nice day, Kamaguchi-san.”

  He got back in the car and slammed the door. Bullet drove him away, leaving Mariko in a stinking haze of diesel fumes. Neither of them decided to shoot her on their way out, and exactly that much had gone right today.

  Her phone vibrated irritably in her pocket. She knew
who it was before she even looked at the screen. “Yeah?”

  “Status report.” Furukawa sounded tense.

  “The same as it was half an hour ago. Except now I’ve exhausted all of my best leads, not just most of them. Oh, and I pissed off the most violent man in Tokyo. And now I’m a big fat oh-for-twenty, instead of oh-for-sixteen or seventeen or whatever I was the last time you called. What about on your end?”

  “About the same.”

  “So much for all your ‘no place we cannot reach’ crap.”

  “That’s precisely the trouble, Detective. We have too much data and not enough filters. That’s what you’re for: to narrow the search parameters. Find me someone who has seen something.”

  Mariko slipped into the Beemer, put Furukawa on speakerphone, and dropped him in the passenger seat. Then she massaged her eye sockets with her thumbs. She’d already tapped all her best resources. She was running out of ideas and those kids were running out of time. In a kidnapping case, the most important events usually happened within the first three hours: a kidnapper was identified, probable destinations were targeted, and most crucially, the kidnapper decided whether or not to kill the child. The great majority of abductors were family members, they usually stuck to their regular hangouts, and they almost never resorted to murder. But when they did, they almost always killed within three hours of the abduction.

  Nothing was typical about this case, but Mariko had a gut-chilling feeling that the three-hour rule still applied. These kids had been gone for just over two hours. If they were still alive, and if Joko Daishi meant to kill them, all the statistics suggested he’d do it soon.

  Mariko’s heart fluttered so erratically that it made her feel queasy. She feared Joko Daishi had left himself no choice but to kill the children. The longer he kept them alive, the more likely they were to royally fuck up his plans. His people might have signed on for some screaming and crying, but by now they’d have piss and shit to deal with too. They’d had time to build a bit of sympathy for the kids, and maybe for their families as well. The initial adrenaline rush would have given way to exhaustion, unless he dosed his people with uppers to keep them alert; either alternative could lead to a moment’s inattention. With the whole city looking for them, Joko Daishi couldn’t afford to let even one child slip away. Mass murder was his safest option.